Our stand-ups were taking over 20 mins, and most importantly, often times people would leave the meeting feeling misaligned. This didn't help the team feel confident about our focus and short-term progress. For a little while, we tried tweaking some things about the meeting, like the scheduled time, reminding people to just report "what matters", etc. Regardless of what we did, the result would essentially be the same. Over time, this would perpetuate the notion that the problem lied in the participants' communication skills. But, what if that wasn't the case? What if the problem lied somewhere else?

This is the story of how luck, networking, preparation and being at the right place at the right time got me onstage at SXSW with no notice, to pitch Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit and co-founder of Hipmunk.

As an entrepreneur, especially for those at the beginning of their journey, you will have to come up with and refine your message in a multitude of different formats. We wrote a few tips to help you describe what your company does.

Shep CEO Daniel Senyard explains his reasoning for joining the startup accelerator, Capital Factory. He talks about how joining Capital Factory has benefited him regarding networking, guidance, and tools to help the company succeed, and why startups should consider joining a startup accelerator.

Travel is a company's second largest controllable expense, but only a third of all companies in America don't have guidance or travel policy in place. Find out how you can easily set some reasonable expectations regarding traveling.